The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for generating figures and other graphic representations.
With conventional graphics technology, it was possible to input circles, rectangles, straight lines and other geometric figures and to delete, move or otherwise edit these figures entered. An example of the prior art in this area is found in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 6249477. This invention was typically embodied by a graphics generating apparatus comprising a structure storage device which stores the structure of each of multiple parts forming an object, a partial figure storage device which stores multiple figures of each part, and a figure generating device which interpolates for display the object in accordance with one of the figures stored in the partial figure storage device. Given these devices, it was possible to generate a new figure based on an entered figure and a figure retrieved from the partial figure storage device.
With the above-described prior art in this area, the part structure storage device and the part figure storage device were used only to modify figures already generated and stored. That is, these devices did not allow for retrieval of a part figure suitable for any figure stored in the figure storage device. So it was necessary to select and specify beforehand a reference figure, which complicated the operating procedures. In addition, the part structure storage device contained-the structure for each part alone. The absence of information on multiple parts amenable to combination made it impossible to combine multiple parts.